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Comment Re:hmmm (Score 1) 86

prohibit the private registration of domains which are "associated with commercial activities and which are used for online financial transactions

I'm not sure I have a big problem with this. If you do business with a company that can just disappear, that'd be a bummer. That said, you shouldn't do business with a company like that, but people aren't always smart.

I've registered several domains in the past and never been asked if they were for personal or commercial use. Are domain name registrars now going to be in the business of policing how domain names are used? At the present time, I don't think they have any involvement in how a domain is actually used, and many are used for multiple purposes, some commercial and some not. Who exactly is going to be responsible for doing this kind of content policing? If it is the registrars, I imagine the cost of registering a domain will go way up to cover their labor costs in monitoring content.

Comment Re:Frosty (Score 1) 141

They would report to the parents, without notification to the student

Gotta call bullshit on this. It's illegal for a university to release that kind of information to anyone other than the student without their consent. Minors attending university have to do special paperwork to address this, but adult students have 100% control over information release to third parties.

That's actually not true. Specific information, such as grades, financial, and medical records are generally protected by laws in most states, and can't be released to parents without the student's consent, but I'm not aware of any such laws which cover other random information such as locations of WiFi access points that students have been using.

Submission + - Password storage service LastPass hacked. (cnn.com)

BitterOak writes: LastPass is a service which claims to securely store all your passwords in one safe place. According to this story, it proved not to be quite as safe as claimed. Apparently they were hacked. Hackers obtained people's e-mail addresses, password reminders, and encrypted versions of their master passwords. With these encrypted passwords, hackers could run brute force attacks to obtain weak passwords very easily. And the reminders may help them to figure out more secure passwords as well.

Comment Re:Capitalist logic (Score 1) 389

If the DJ did indeed pay a fee to play said songs, then I don't see why another should be paid by the restaurant owner.

EXACTLY. What if the DJ had played the songs in a park? Would the city have to pay BMI's licensing shakedown fee?

If the owner of the park (the city government perhaps) were charging admission or otherwise benefiting commercially from the performance of the music, then yes they would have to pay the license fee.

Comment Re:Problem is other people (Score 1) 110

This rule would only apply to the internet, not TV or print.

I think we go down a very slippery slope when we say that the Internet should receive less First Amendment protection than television or print media. Television and print are largely in the control of large media companies with lots of money. The Internet is accessible to anyone; it costs almost nothing to start your own blog. In a sense, the Internet is (or has the potential to be) a great equalizer. As soon as you start placing restrictions on Internet speech that don't apply to "big media" speech, you tip the balance of power back in the direction of the wealthy elite.

Additionally, the line between TV and print on the one hand and the Internet on the other is becoming more and more blurred all the time. Many people watch their television through Internet streaming services. Does that count as TV or Internet? And most print newspapers have an online edition, with many people reading only the online edition. Your rule would mean that some articles appearing in the print edition would not be able to appear on the online edition. And what about e-reader (such as Kindle) editions of newspapers? Do the print or Internet rules apply to those?

Comment Re:Brace yourselves Canada (Score 1) 108

U.S. American tech company immigrants are coming, with their educations and disposable incomes.

As a Canadian, I would welcome this. We are also well educated here (the University of Waterloo has a world class computer science program) and any infusion of tech capital would be a good thing. I'd be very happy to work alongside American immigrants in the tech sector. I think there'd be plenty of jobs to go around.

Comment Re:Brace yourselves Canada (Score 1) 108

I'm afraid the situation is not that much better up here.

At least not as long as Stephen Harper and his Progressive Conservatives are still in power, a center right party.

The fact that they are "center right" has nothing to do with the present issue. I'm not aware that any Canadian government, current or previous, has even suggested the idea of restrictions on encryption or mandatory back doors in consumer products. In the U.S., the idea typically comes when Democrats are in the White House. (Remember the Clipper chip? That was under Clinton's administration.)

Comment Technically, they are correct. (Score 5, Informative) 165

The FISA Court is not under the jurisdiction of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal. In the Federal Court system, the Supreme Court is at the top. Immediately below the Supreme Court are the Courts of Appeal for the different circuits which cover different geographical regions of the country. Also sitting directly below the Supreme Court are the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal which handles specialized cases like patent cases, and the FISA court, which handles cases whose national security implications require secrecy. Below the various Circuit Courts of Appeal are the district courts, which are the lowest courts in the federal system.

So, the FISA court, sort of sits beside the 2nd Circuit court, not below or above it. Only the Supreme Court can direct how the FISA court must interpret the law. That's not to say that the FISA court can't be guided by opinions in other circuits. Courts of appeal frequently look to opinions in other Circuit courts of Appeal for guidance on cases involving issues they haven't decided before, but they are not bound to follow opinions in other Circuits.

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